Quotes About Expression

Me and my friends had BMX magazines and skate magazines, and I was a photographer who made skate videos.

Part of the reason I fell in love with dance so early was because of people like Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, and Britney Spears. When they would dance onstage and in their videos, that was huge for me. I lived for that.

I love doing hair and makeup and making 'Video Star' videos with my friend, Kendall. I also love to draw. But my life is dance, dance and more dance. I wouldn't want it any other way.

I come up with the ideas for my videos, and I write the lyrics and choreograph them, and I direct them and tell everyone what to do and how I want them to sing the parts and do the tongue pops and eye rolls and stuff like that.

I don't want to make videos where people are always happy and they're agreeing. It's boring! Do something where people can talk about it.

All the things I do in my videos - the jumps, twirls and back bends - will also be onstage.

A lot of my writing comes from the themes of my life, and a lot of that stems from my faith. I also strive to be a light through which Christ can shine, whether it's through the way I dress, though my videos, or through my music.

I really believe in giving tools and resources to other creators so that they can create beautiful videos.

I sing a little bit in videos, at the end of vlogs. A lot of my fans started requesting that I do a song. They started planting this seed in me.

I've always worked from images that already exist in our culture, and I just tweak them - I photograph my vision/interpretation of things that already exist, and I take it to the extreme. And then I make paintings or videos.

I'm not into just one thing; I always felt like I had to have my hand in everything revolving around what I do, whether it's directing videos, making beats, making music, performing.

It's just weird because videos games let you be something that you're not; so does acting, but it puts you in, like, a real-situation-type thing or something totally different.

I used to watch those rock videos where they would chainsaw the piano. And I thought, 'That's what I want to do.' I thought classical music was corny.

When I do videos, it's just myself.

Music videos, to me, are like an extension of a song.

I've done hip-hop videos, family comedies, a quirky comedy.

I just block out the demons. I sing. I block them away. I put my pain into my music. I paint. I make my own videos. I direct myself. No one directs me anymore. I am in charge of my destiny.

Music is something I've always been interested in and incorporated into my videos.

We actually found some home videos, some really funny footage of me when I was around 3 years old. I come up to the camera to do a Nixon impression. I don't know who taught me that, but I come up to the camera and said, 'I am not a crook.' I got a really good laugh. You see me register that bringing joy to people is a positive thing.

I don't want to make videos that come out looking like commercials or movie trailers.

I don't think any artist has really relied on music videos the way I do. It's almost like my radio.

I think you can make a gorgeous movie on any piece of equipment. Look at 'Tangerine,' which is a beautiful movie shot on an iPhone. You see so many movies that are impeccably shot but are vapid, and there's no audience for that except for other cinematographers who just like to watch two-hour-long music videos.

We take the art seriously. We take communicating it seriously. And maybe we took ourselves a little too seriously in the beginning. Sometimes I watch the videos, and I think, 'Yeah, you could've relaxed a lot in the 'I Alone' video,' you know?

I want to tell Miranda's story more broadly than what I have been in these five-minute videos on the Internet. She can live in a longer format.